A special report prepared
by the
Southern Poverty Law Center
Montgomery, AL 36104

The Ku Klux Klan's long history of violence grew out of
the resentment and hatred many white Southerners felt in the aftermath
of the Civil War. Blacks, having won the struggle for freedom from slavery,
were now faced with a new struggle against widespread racism and the terrorism
of the Ku Klux Klan. While the menace of the KKK has peaked and waned over
the years, it has never vanished.

The bare facts about the birth of the Ku Klux Klan and its revival
half a century later are baffling to most people today. Little more than
a year after it was founded, the secret society thundered across the war-torn
South, sabotaged Reconstruction governments and imposed a reign of terror
and violence that lasted three or four years. And then as rapidly as it
had spread, the Klan faded into the history books. After World War I a
new version of the Klan sputtered to life and brought many parts of the
nation under its paralyzing grip of racism and bloodshed. Then, having
grown to be a major force for the second time, the Klan again receded into
the background. This time it never quite disappeared, but it never again
commanded such widespread support.

Today it seems incredible that an organization so violent, so opposed
to the American principles of justice and equality, could twice in the
nation's history have held such power. How did the Ku Klux Klan - one of
the nation's first terrorist groups - so instantly seize the South in the
aftermath of the Civil War? Why did it so quickly vanish? How could it
have risen so rapidly to power in the 1920's and then so rapidly loose
that power? And why is this ghost of the Civil War still haunting America
today with hatred, violence and sometimes death for its enemies and its
own members?

The answers do not lie on the surface of American history; they are
deeper than the events of the turbulent 1960's, the parades and cross burnings
and lynching of the 1920's, beyond even the Reconstruction era and the
Civil War. The story begins, really, on the frontier, where successive
generations of Americans learned hard lessons about survival. Those lessons
produced some of the qualities of life for which the nation is most admired--fierce
individualism, enterprising inventiveness and the freedom to be whatever
a person wants to be and go wherever a new road leads.

But the frontier spirit included other traits as well, and one was
a stubborn reliance on "frontier justice" - an instant, private,
and often violent method of settling differences without involving lawyers
or courts. Vigilante justice became the motivation for many who later rode
with the Ku Klux Klan.

A more obvious explanation of the South's widespread acceptance of
the Klan is found in the institution of slavery. Freedom for slaves represented
for many white Southerners a bitter defeat - a defeat not only of their
armies in the field but of their economic and social way of life. It was
an age-old nightmare come true, for early in Southern life whites in general
and plantation owners in particular had begun to view the large number
of slaves living among them as a potential threat to their property and
their lives.

A series of bloody slave revolts in Virginia and other parts of the
South led to the widespread practice of night patrols - white men specially
deputized for the purpose of prowling Southern roads enforcing the curfew
for slaves, looking for runaways, and guarding rural areas against the
threat of black uprisings. They were authorized by law to give a specific
number of lashes to any violators they caught. The memory of these legal
night riders and their whips was still fresh in the minds of both defeated
Southerners and liberated blacks when the first Klansmen took to those
same roads in 1866.

Aftermath of War

The Klan grew out of white Southern anger over the Civil War defeat
and the Reconstruction that followed. Northerners saw in the Klan an attempt
of unrepentant Confederates to win through terrorism what they had been
unable to win on the battlefield. Such a simple view did not totally explain
the Klan's sway over the South, but there is little doubt that many a Confederate
veteran exchanged his rebel gray for the hoods and sheets of the invisible
empire.

And the conditions in the South immediately after the war added to
Southerners' fears and frustrations. Cities, plantations and farms were
ruined; people were impoverished and often hungry; there was an occupation
army in their midst; and Reconstruction governments threatened to usurp
the traditional white ruling authority. In the first few months after the
fighting ended, white Southerners had to contend with the losses of life,
property and, in their eyes, honor. The time was ripe for the Ku Klux Klan
to ride.

Origins of the Ku Klux Klan

The origin of the Ku Klux Klan was a carefully guarded secret for
years, although there were many theories to explain its beginnings. One
Popular notion held that the Ku Klux Klan was originally a secret order
of Chinese opium smugglers. Another claimed it was begun by Confederate
prisoners during the war. The most ridiculous theory attributed the name
to some ancient Jewish document referring to the Hebrews enslaved by Egyptian
pharaohs.

In fact the beginning of the Klan involved nothing so sinister, subversive
or ancient as the theories supposed. It was the boredom of small-town life
that led six young Confederate veterans to gather around a fireplace one
December evening in 1865 and form a social club. The place was Pulaski,
Tennessee, near the Alabama border. When they reassembled a week later,
the six young men were full of ideas for their new society. It would be
secret, to heighten the amusement of the thing, and the titles for the
various officers were to have names as preposterous-sounding as possible,
partly for the fun of it and partly to avoid any military or political
implications.

Thus, the head of the group was called the Grand Cyclops. His assistant
was the Grand Magi; there was to be a Grand Turk to greet all candidates
for admission, a Grand Scribe to act as secretary, Night Hawks for messengers
and a Lictor to be the guard. The members, when the six young men found
some to join, would be called Ghouls. But what name to call the society
itself? The founders were determined to come up with something unusual
and mysterious. Being well-educated, they turned to Greek. After tossing
around a number of ideas, Richard R. Reed suggested the word "kuklos,"
from which the English words "circle and "cycle" are derived.
Another member, Captain John B. Kennedy, had an ear for alliteration and
added the word "clam." After tinkering with the sound for a while,
group settled on the "Ku Klux Klan." The selection of the name,
chance though it was, had a great deal to do with the Klan's early success.
Something about the sound aroused curiosity and gave the fledgling club
an immediate air of mystery, as did the initials K.K.K., which were soon
to take on such terrifying significance.

Soon after the founders named the Klan, they decided to a bit of
showing off and so disguised themselves in sheets and galloped their horses
through the quiet streets of little Pulaski. Their ride created such a
stir that the men decided to adopt the sheets as the official regalia of
the Ku Klux Klan, and they added to the effect by making grotesque masks
and tall pointed hats. The founders also performed elaborate initiation
ceremonies for new members. Their ceremony was similar to the hazing popular
in college fraternities and consisted of blindfolding the candidate, subject
him to a series of silly oaths and rough handling, and finally bringing
him before a "royal alter" where he was to be invested with"royal
crown." The altar turned out to be a mirror and the crown two large
donkey's ears. Ridiculous though it sounds today, that was the high point
of the earliest activities of the Ku Klux Klan.

Had that been all there was to the Ku Klux Klan, it probably would
have disappeared as quietly as it was born. But at some point in early
1866 the Club, enlarged with new members from nearby towns, began to have
a chilling effect on local blacks. The intimidating night rides were soon
the centerpiece of the hooded order: bands of white-sheeted ghouls paid
late night visits to black homes, admonishing the terrified occupants to
behave themselves and threatening more visits if they didn't. It didn't
take long for the threats to be converted into violence against blacks
who insisted on exercising their new rights and freedom. Before its six
founders realized what had happened, the Ku Klux Klan had become something
they may not have originally intended--something deadly serious.

Mischief Turns Malicious

From that beginning in the little town of Pulaski, Tenn., the Klan
began to grow. Historians disagree on the intention of the six founders,
but it is known that word quickly spread about the new organization whose
members met in secret and rode with their faces hidden, who practiced elaborate
rituals and initiation ceremonies.

Much of the Klan's early reputation was based on mischief. One favorite
Klan tactic was for a white sheeted Klansman wearing a ghoulish mask to
ride up to a black home at night and demand water. When the well bucket
was offered, the Klansman would gulp it down and demand more, having actually
poured the water through a rubber tube that flowed into a leather bottle
concealed beneath his robe. After draining several buckets, the rider would
exclaim that he had not had a drink since he died on the battlefield at
Shiloh, and gallop into the night, leaving the impression that ghosts of
Confederate dead were riding the countryside.

In time, the malicious mischief turned to outright violence. The
presence of armed white men roving the countryside at night reminded many
blacks of the pre-war slave patrols. The fact that Klansmen rode with their
faces covered intensified blacks' suspicion and fear. Whippings were used
first, but within months there were bloody clashes between Klansmen and
blacks, Northerners who had come South, or Southern unionists.

White Rule Victimized Blacks

By the time the six Klan founders met in December, 1865, the opening
phase of Reconstruction was nearly complete. All eleven of the former rebel
states had been rebuilt on astonishingly lenient terms which allowed many
of the ex-Confederate leaders to return to positions of power. Southern
state legislatures began enacting laws that made it clear that the aristocrats
who ran them intended to yield none of their pre-war power over poor whites
and especially over blacks. These laws became known as the Black Codes
and in some cases they amounted to a virtual re-enslavement of blacks.

In Louisiana the Democratic convention resolved that "we hold
this to be a Government of White People, made and to be perpetuated for
the exclusive benefit of the White Race, and....that the people of African
descent cannot be considered as citizens of the United States." Mississippi
and Florida in particular enacted vicious black codes, other southern states
(except North Carolina) passed somewhat less severe versions, and President
Andrew Johnson did nothing to prevent them from being enforced.

These laws and the violence that erupted against blacks and union
supporters in the South outraged Northern s who just a few months before
had celebrated victory not only over the Confederacy, but its system of
slavery as well. In protest of the defiant Black Codes, Congress refused
to seat the new Southern senators and representatives when it reconvened
in December 1865 after a long recess. Thus at the moment the fledgling
Klan was born in Pulaski, the stage was set for a showdown between Northerners
determined not to be cheated out of the fruits of their victory and die-hard
Southerners who refused to give up their supremacy over blacks.

Ironically, the increasingly violent activities of the Klan throughout
1866 tended to help prove the argument of Radical Republicans in the North,
who wanted harsher measures taken against Southern governments as part
of their program to force equal treatment for blacks. Partly as a result
of news reports of Klan violence in the South, the Radicals won overwhelming
victories in the Congressional elections of 1866.

In early 1867 they made a fresh start at Reconstruction. Congress
overrode President Johnson's veto and passed the Reconstruction Acts, which
abolished the ex-Confederate state governments and divided 10 of the 11
former rebel states into military districts. The military were charged
with enrolling black voters and holding elections for new con- stitutional
conventions in each of the 10 states, which led to the creation of the
Radical Reconstruction Southern governments.

Ghost Riders

In April 1867, a call went out for all known Ku Klux Klan chapters
or dens to send representatives to Nashville, Tennessee, for a meeting
that would plan the Klan response to the new federal Reconstruction policy.

Throughout the summer and fall, the Klan steadily had become more
violent. Thousands of the white citizens of Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia
and Mississippi had by this time joined the Klan and many now viewed the
escalating violence with growing alarm - not necessarily because they had
sympathy for the victims but because the night riding was getting out of
their control. Anyone could put on a sheet and a mask and ride into the
night to commit assault, robbery, rape, arson or murder.

At the Nashville Klan meeting, leaders sought to grapple with these
problems and decide just what sort of organization the Klan would be. They
created a chain of command and sanctioned white supremacy as the fundamental
creed of the Ku Klux Klan. Throughout the summer of 1867 the invisible
empire changed, shedding the antics that had brought laughter and taking
on the full nature of a secret and sinister force.

All the now-familiar tactics of the Klan date from this period -
the threats delivered to blacks, radicals and other enemies, the night
raids on individuals they singled out for rougher treatment, and the mass
demonstrations of masked and robed Klansmen designed to cast fear over
a troubled community.

By early 1868, stories about Klan activities were appearing in newspapers
nationwide and Reconstruction governors realized they faced nothing less
than an insurrection by a terrorist organization. Orders went out from
state capitols and Union army headquarters to suppress the Klan.

Invisible Government

But it was too late. From middle Tennessee, the Klan quickly was
established in nearby counties and then in North and South Carolina. In
some counties the Klan became the de facto law, an invisible government
that state officials could not control.

When Tennessee Governor William G. Brownlow attempted to plant spies
within the Klan, he found the organization knew as much about his efforts
as he did. One Brownlow spy who tried to join the Klan was found strung
up in a tree. Later another spy was stripped and mutilated, and a third
was stuffed in a barrel in Nashville and rolled into the Cumberland River
where he drowned.

With the tacit sympathy and support of most white citizens often
behind, the Klan worked behind a veil that was impossible for Brownlow
and other Reconstruction governors to pierce. But even though a large majority
of white Southerners opposed the Radical state governments, not all of
them approved of the hooded order's brand of vigilante justice. During
its first year, the Klan's public marches and parades were sometimes hooted
and jeered at by townspeople who looked upon them as a joke. Later, when
the Klan began to use guns and whips to make its point, some civic leaders
spoke out against the violence.

But in the late 1860's white Southern voices against the Klan were
in the minority. One of the Klan's greatest strengths during this period
was the large number of editors, ministers, former Confederate officers
and political leaders who hid behind its sheets and guided its actions.

Among them, none was more widely respected in the South than the
Klan's reputed leader, Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, a legendary Confederate
cavalry officer who settled in Tennessee and apparently joined the Klan
fairly soon after it began to make a name for itself. Forrest became the
Klan's first imperial wizard, and in 1867 and 1868 he was its chief missionary,
traveling over the South establishing new chapters and quietly advising
its new members.

The ugly side of the Ku Klux Klan, the mutilations and floggings,
lynching and shootings, began to spread across the South in 1868, and any
words of caution that may have been expressed at the Nashville meeting
were submerged beneath a stream of bloody deeds.

The KKK's First Death

As the violence escalated, it turned to general lawlessness and some
Klan groups even began fighting each other. In Nashville, a gang of outlaws
who adopted the Klan disguise came to be known as the Black Ku Klux Klan,
and for several months middle Tennessee was plagued by a guerrilla war
between the real and bogus Klans.

The Klan was also coming under increased attack by Congress and the
Reconstruction state governments. The leaders of the Klan realized that
the order's end was at hand, at least as any sort of organized force.

It is widely believed that Forrest ordered the Klan disbanded in
January 1869, but the surviving document is rather ambiguous (some historians
think Forrest's "order" was just a trick so he could deny responsibility
or knowledge of Klan atrocities).

Whatever the actual date, it is clear that as an organized body across
the South, the KKK had ceased to exist by the end of 1869.

That did not end the violence, however, and as atrocities became
more widespread, Radical legislatures throughout the region passed harsher
laws, imposed martial law in some Klan-dominated counties, and actively
hunted Klan leaders.

In 1871 Congress held hearings on the Klan and passed a tough anti-Klan
law modeled after a North Carolina statute. Under the new federal law,
Southerners lost their jurisdiction over the crimes of assault, robbery
and murder and the president was authorized to declare martial law. Night
riding and the wearing of masks were expressly prohibited. Hundreds of
Klansmen were arrested but few actually went to prison.

These laws probably dampened the enthusiasm for the Klan, but they
can hardly be credited with destroying it. The fact was, by the mid- 1870's
white Southerners had retaken control of most Southern state governments
and didn't need the Klan as much as before. Klan terror had proven very
effective at keeping black voters away from the polls. Some black officeholders
were hanged and many more were brutally beaten. White Southern Democrats
won elections easily, and passed laws taking away many rights that blacks
had won during Reconstruction.

The result was a system of segregation which was the law of the land
for more than 80 years. This system was called "separate but equal,"
which was half true - everything was separate, but nothing was equal.

Born Again

During the last half of the nineteenth century, memories of the Klan's
brief grip on the South faded, and its bloody deeds were forgotten by many
whites who were once in sympathy with its cause. On the national scene,
two events served to set the stage for the Ku Klux Klan to be reborn in
the twentieth century.

The first was massive immigration, bringing some 23 million people
from Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Hungary, and Russia and a great cry
of opposition from some Americans. The American Protective Association,
organized in 1887, reflected the attitude of many Americans who believed
that the nation was being swamped by alien people. This organization a
secret, oath-bound group was especially strong in the mid-west where the
Ku Klux Klan would later draw much of its strength.

The other major event which prepared the ground for the Klan's return
was World War I. On the European battlefields, blacks served in the uniform
of their country and saw a new world open up before them. Back at home,
Americans learned suspicion of anything alien, and shunned President Wilson's
League of Nations.

In the South, yet another series of events occurred which helped
breathe life into the Klan several decades later. In the 1890's an agrarian
Populist movement tried to build a coalition of blacks and poor whites
against the mill owners, large landholders and conservative elite of the
Old South. The answer of the aristocracy was the old cry of white supremacy
combined with the manipulation of black votes, and the Populists were substantially
turned back in every Deep South state except Georgia and North Carolina.
The result was a feeling across the South shared by both aristocracy and
many poor whites that blacks had to be frozen out of their society.

Thus the 1890's marked the beginning of the Deep South's most divisive
attempts to keep blacks politically, socially and economically powerless.
Most segregation laws date from that period. It was also the beginning
of a series of lynching of blacks by white mobs. The combination of legalized
racism and the constant threat of violence eventually led to a major black
migration to Northern cities.

William J. Simmons, a Spanish American War veteran-turned preacher-turned
salesman, was a compulsive joiner, holding memberships in maybe a dozen
different societies and two churches. But he had always dreamed of starting
his own fraternal group and in the fall of 1915 he put his plans into action.

On Thanksgiving Eve, Simmons herded 15 fellow fraternalists onto
a hired bus and drove them from Atlanta to nearby Stone Mountain. There,
before a cross of pine boards, Simmons lit a match and the Ku Klux Klan
of the 20th century was born.

But although Simmons adopted the titles and regalia of the original
version, his new creation had little similarity at first to the Reconstruction
Klan, which had officially ended in 1869.

Simmons' Klan was not unlike the dozens of benevolent societies then
population America. There is little doubt that Simmons' ultimate purpose
in forming the group was to make money. But growth at first was slow, even
after America entered World War I in 1917 and the Klan had a real "purpose"--
that of defending the country from aliens, idlers and strike leaders.

Then, in 1920, Simmons met Edward Young Clarke and Elizabeth Tyler,
two publicists who had formed a business in Atlanta. With the Klan's membership
at only a few thousand, Simmons signed a contract with Clarke and Tyler
giving them 80 percent of the profits from the dues of the new members
Simmons so eagerly sought. The promoters used an aggressive new sales pitch--the
Klan would be rabidly pro America, which to them meant rabidly anti-black,
anti-Jewish and most importantly, anti-Catholic.

The new stance was graphically illustrated by Simmons when he was
introduced to an audience of Georgia Klansmen and drew a Colt automatic
pistol, a revolver and a cartridge belt from his coat and arranged them
on the table before him. Plunging a Bowie knife into the table beside the
guns, he issued an invitation: "Now let the Niggers, Catholics, Jews
and all others who disdain my imperial wizardry, come out!"

Exploiting Fears

The message was clear--the new Klan was going to mean business. And
that soon meant expanding its list of enemies to include Asians, immigrants,
bootleggers, dope, graft, night clubs and road houses, violation of the
Sabbath, sex, pre- and extra-marital escapades and scandalous behavior.
The Klan, with its new mission of social vigilance, soon had organizers
scouring the nation, probing for the communities' fears and then exploiting
them to the hilt.

And the tactic was an overnight raging success. By the late summer
of 1921 nearly 100,000 people had enrolled in the invisible empire, and
at ten dollars a head (tax-free since the Klan was a "benevolent"
society), the profits were impressive. While Simmons made speeches and
tinkered with ritual, Clarke busied himself with expanding the treasury,
launching Klan publishing and manufacturing firms and investing in real
estate. The future looked very good.

But during that summer the Klan leaders in Atlanta ran into their
first trouble--controlling their far-flung empire. While Klan officials
talked of fraternal ideals in Atlanta, their members across the nation
began to take seriously the fiery rhetoric the recruiters were using to
drum up new initiation fees. Violence first flared in a rampage of whippings,
tar-and-feathers raids and the particularly gruesome use of acid to brand
the letters "KKK" on the foreheads of blacks, Jews and others
they considered anti-American. Ministers, sheriffs, policemen, mayors and
judges either ignored the violence or secretly participated. Few Klansmen
were arrested, much less convicted.

The Klan Exposed

In September, the New York World began a series of expos‚ articles
of the Klan, backed up by the revelations of an ex-recruiter. Another newspaper
reported some of the internal gossip and financial manipulations within
the Atlanta headquarters. And even more embarrassing was a story in the
World that Clarke and Tyler had been arrested not quite fully clothed in
a police raid on a bawdy house in 1919.

The article badly tarnished the Klan's moralistic image and began
a serious rift within the ranks. The World's expose' also brought demands
for countermeasures, and Congress responded in October, 1921, with hearings
into the Klan's activities. Although the congressional inquiry so upset
Clarke that he considered resigning, the actual hearings did little damage
to the Klan. Simmons explained away the secrecy of the Klan as just part
of the fraternal aspect of the organization; he disavowed any link between
his Klan and the nightriders of Reconstruction days and he denied--just
as Forrest had done 50 years earlier--any knowledge of or responsibility
for the violence. The committee adjourned without action and the Klan benefited
from all the publicity.

It almost seemed as if people in the rural areas of the country were
determined to support whatever the big newspapers and Congress condemned.
Following more articles in the World, these concentrating on the violent
nature of the Klan, membership in the invisible empire exploded. "It
wasn't until the newspapers began to attack the that it really grew,"
Simmons recalled later. "Certain newspapers also aided us by inducing
Congress to investigate us. The result was that Congress gave us the best
advertising we ever got. Congress made us."

Power Struggle

With the Klan's new strength came prolonged internal bickering. In
the fall of 1922, with Texas dentist Hiram Wesley Evans leading the way,
six conspirators made plans to dethrone Simmons. Evans became imperial
wizard and in 1928, the conspirators saw a chance to grab permanent control
of the Klan's property, worth millions of dollars by this time. When Clarke
was indicted on a two-year-old morals charge, Evans was able to cancel
the promoters lucrative contract with the Klan and thus seize control of
the money-making dues apparatus. Mrs. Tyler had already resigned to get
married, so that left only Simmons, who became furious when he realized
that he had been out-maneuvered by Evans and his faction.

A full scale war was fought between the Evans' and Simmons' factions
with lawsuits and countersuits, warrants and injunctions, all gleefully
reported in the newspapers across the country. The fight spilled over into
chapters in Texas and Pennsylvania and the resulted in the shooting of
Simmons' lawyers by Evans' hot-headed chief publicity man. The power struggle
ended in February, 1924, when Simmons agreed to a cash settlement.

The Klan continued to grow during this period of internal strife,
but all of its weaknesses were laid open for America to see. The Klan promoted
itself as an organization dedicated to defending the morals of the nation
but there been too many charges of immorality against its leaders. Its
supposed nonprofit status was badly undermined by the wrangling over finances
and most of its vaunted secrecy was exposed in the reams of court documentation
churned out by the feuding.

More Violence

And its violence was clearly revealed. Under Evans a wave of repression
punctuated by lynchings, shootings and whippings swept over the nation
in the early and mid-1920's and many communities were firmly in the grasp
of the Klan's terror. The victims were usually blacks, Jews, Catholics,
Mexicans and various immigrants, but sometimes they were white, Protestant,
and female. Klansmen attacked people they considered "immoral"
or "traitors" to the white race.

In Alabama, for example, a divorcee with two children was flogged
for the crime of remarrying, and then given a jar of Vaseline for her wounds.
In Georgia a woman was given 60 lashes for a vague charge of "immorality
and failure to go to church." And when her 15-year-old son ran to
her rescue, he received the same treatment. In both cases the leaders of
the Klansmen responsible turned out to be ministers.

But such instances were not confined to the South--in Oklahoma Klansmen
applied the lash to girls caught riding in automobiles with young men,
and the Klan in the San Joaquin Valley in California were know to flog
and torture women.

In a period when many women were fighting for the vote, for a place
in the job market, and for personal and cultural freedom, the Klan claimed
to stand for "pure womanhood" and frequently attacked women who
sought independence.

Political Gains

During the period of its most uncontrolled violence, the Klan also
experienced unprecedented political gains. In 1922 Texas voters sent Klansman
Earl Mayfield to the U.S. Senate, and Klan campaigns helped defeat two
Jewish congressmen who had headed the Klan inquiry. Klan efforts were credited
with helping to elect governors in Georgia, Alabama, California and Oregon.
In Colorado, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Indiana, and Ohio, the Klan also achieved
major power between 1921 and 1924. And there were pockets of strength in
many other areas.

With two million members, new recruits joining the secret rolls daily,
a host of friendly politicians throughout the land and his internal enemies
subdued for the moment, Evans wanted to influence the presidential election
of 1924. He even shifted his national headquarters from Atlanta to Washington.
The Klan had a foothold in both parties since Deep South members tended
to be Democrats while Klansmen in the North and West were often Republicans.

But of the three major Presidential candidates, two were outspoken
enemies of the Ku Klux Klan. And when the Democratic convention opened
in New York, many Democrats were de- manding the party adopt a platform
plank condemning the Ku Klux Klan. The resulting fight tore the convention
apart and after days of bitter wrangling over the issue, the platform plank
de- nouncing the Klan lost by a single vote.

Although politicians became increasingly uncomfortable with Klan
allies as a result of the turmoil, the success of the Klan candidates across
the nation in 1924 buoyed Evans' spirits. His notoriety peaked with a parade
of 40,000 Klansmen down Washington's Pennsylvania Avenue to the Washington
Monument in August 1925. Evans boasted of having helped re-elect Coolidge,
of having secured passage of strict anti-immigration laws and of having
checked the ambitions of Catholics and others intent on "perverting"
the nation. All in all, the Klan was riding high in the saddle.

Losing Ground

But the decline of the Ku Klux Klan was just ahead. By 1926 when
Evans tried to repeat the parade in Washington, only half as many marchers
arrived and they were sobered by the news of political defeats in areas
that a year before had been considered safe Klan strongholds.

Increasingly, the Klan suffered counterattacks by the clergy, the
press and a growing number of politicians. Then, in 1927, a group of rebellious
Klansmen in Pennsylvania broke away from the invisible empire and Evans
promptly filed a $100,000 damage suit against them, confident that he could
make an example of the rebels. To his surprise the Pennsylvania Klansmen
fought back in the courts and the resulting string of witnesses told of
Klan horrors, named members and spilled secrets. Newspapers carried accounts
of testimony ranging from the kidnaping of a small girl from her grandparents
in Pittsburgh to the beating of a Colorado Klansman who tried to quit the
Klan. One particularly horrible story described how a man in Terrell, Texas,
had been soaked in oil and burned to death before several hundred Klansmen.
The enraged judge threw Evans' case out of court.

The next year, when the Democrats nominated Al Smith, a New York
Catholic and longtime Klan foe, to run for president against the Republicans'
Herbert Hoover, the Klan had a perfect issue which Evans hoped to use to
whip up the faithful. But his invisible empire had melted from three million
in 1925 to no more than several hundred thousand, and the Klan was no factor
in Hoover's election. Americans had clearly tired of the divisive effect
the masks, robes and burning crosses had on their communities. What was
left of the Klan's clout disappeared as its old friends in office, sensing
the new political winds, deserted the Klan in droves.

During the 1930's the nation wallowed in the Great Depression and
the Klan continued to shrink. It became primarily a fraternal society,
its leaders urging its members to stay out of trouble and the national
headquarters hoarding its meager funds. After Franklin D. Roosevelt took
office, the Klan began to complain that he was bringing too many Catholics
and Jews into the government. Later they added the charge that the New
Deal was tinged with communism. The red menace was used more and more by
Evans and other Klansmen as their rallying cry, and communists eventually
replaced Catholics as one of the Klan's foremost enemies.

But only in Florida was the Klan still a factor in the 1930's. With
a statewide membership of about 30,000, the Klan was active in Jacksonville,
Miami, and the citrus belt from Orlando to Tampa. In the orange groves
of central Florida, Klansmen still operated in the old night riding style,
intimidating blacks who tried to vote, "punishing" marital infidelity
and clashing with union organizers. Florida responded with laws to unmask
the nightriders, and a crusading journalist named Stetson Kennedy infiltrated
and then exposed the Klan, rousing the anger of ministers, editors, politicians,
and plain citizens.

New Leadership

Evans was replaced in 1939 by James A. Colescott of Indiana, who
led the Klan in the Carolinas--where unions were crying to organize textile
workers--and in Georgia, where night riding resulted in the flogging of
some 50 people during a two-year period--including an Atlanta couple who
were beaten to death in a love's lane. An outcry from the citizens of Georgia
and South Carolina brought arrests and convictions, and the Klan was forced
to retreat.

In the North, the Klan suffered another reversal when some local
chapters began to exhibit ties with American Nazis, a move Southern Klansmen
opposed but were basically powerless to stop. The end cam in 1944 when
the Internal Revenue Service filed a lien against the Ku Klux Klan for
back taxes of more $685,000 on profits earned during the 1920's. "We
had to sell our assets and hand over the proceeds to the government and
go out of business," Colescott recalled when it was over. "Maybe
the government can make something out of the Klan--I never could."
Powerful social forces were at work in the United States following World
War II. A new wave of immigrants, particularly Jewish refugees, arrived
from war-torn Europe. A generation of young black soldiers returned home
after having been a part of a great army fighting for world freedom. In
the South, particularly, labor unions began extensive campaigns to organize
poorly paid workers. The migration from the farms to the cities continued,
with a resulting shakeup in old political alliances. Bigots began to howl
more loudly than in years, and a new Klan leader began to beat the drums
of anti-black, anti-union, anti-Jew, anti-Catholic and anti-Communist hatred.

This man was Samuel Green, an Atlanta doctor. Green managed to reorganize
the Klan in California, Kentucky, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Georgia,
South Carolina, Tennessee, Florida and Alabama. But both federal and state
bureaus of investigation prosecuted Klan lawlessness, and Green found that
his hooded order was surrounded by enemies. The press throughout the South
had become increasingly hostile, ministers were more and more inclined
to attack the Klan and state and local governments passed laws against
cross burnings and masks.

By the time of Green's death in 1949, the Klan was fractured by internal
disputes and hounded by investigations from all sides in response to a
wave of Klan violence in the South. Many Klansmen went to jail for floggings
or other criminal acts. And by the early 1950's, membership in the invisible
empire was at its lowest level since its rebirth on Stone Mountain in 1915.